


and it's here right in front of you, this is where you want to be

by elsaclack



Series: meandering thoughts of a hopeless romantic [4]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: 3rd time's the charm y'all, F/M, Fluff, One Shot Collection, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt Collection, anniversary fluff, pure fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-03-12 22:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 21,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13556781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsaclack/pseuds/elsaclack
Summary: a collection of one-shots originally posted to tumblr





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning of June 15th begins suddenly with a low voice in her ear.

The morning of June 15th begins suddenly with a low voice in her ear.

“Amelia Maria Santiago-Peralta,” the voice is quiet, but it rumbles with delight. And even though she groans instinctively at her abrupt return to consciousness, she can’t help but to smile when his lips brush against her ear. “Do you know what today is?”

“Mmm,” she turns her head to bury her face in her pillow for one more moment, before rolling over to her back. When her eyes flutter open she finds him leaning over her, propped up on his elbow, grinning far too brightly for six o’clock in the morning. “It’s Friday,” she mumbles, “and my middle name’s not Maria.”

He snorts and leans forward, and her eyes close just their lips meet in a slow, leisurely kiss. She’s got her fingers slipping through the curls at the nape of his neck when he pulls away, and when she opens her eyes his whole expression is awash with unadulterated affection. “You’re technically not wrong, Amy Jolene Santiago-Peralta,” she laughs, curling her fingers so her nails scrape gently against his scalp. “But that’s not quite the answer we were looking for.”

“It’s not Jolene,” she says through her grin, shifting a little on the pillow to look him more directly in the eye. “And let me think…is it someone’s birthday?”

“It is  _not_ someone’s birthday, Amy May Santiago-Peralta.”

“Hm…is your mom’s art gallery opening today?”

His face falls for a moment, before relief quickly overtakes him. “That’s next week, Amelia Mignonette Santiago-Peralta.” He says smugly. “Try again.”

She furrows her brow. “Mignon- is that from  _The Princess Diaries_?”

“Don’t try to change the subject Amelia Corona Santiago-Peralta -”

Her laughter is loud, and when she tugs on his hair he goes willingly, muffling his own laughter into her neck. The mattress quakes merrily beneath her back from their combined movements.

“You’re an idiot,” she finally breathes after a long moment. He releases something between a grunt and a bark of laughter that buzzes against her neck, and then quickly soothes the epicenter with his puckered lips. “But I guess I can’t give you a hard time, since today is the one-month anniversary of the day I legally became Mrs. Idiot, so…”

He pulls back, the brightest grin yet plastered across his face. “You remembered,” he sighs dreamily, before ducking his head to drop quick pecks across her face and neck.

“Which is more than can be said about you and my middle name,” she laughs as he nips against the corner of her jaw, and in her peripheral vision she can see her matching engagement ring and wedding ring catching the morning light beginning to pour in through their bedroom windows.

“I remember every single thing about you, Amelia Thermopolis Santiago-Peralta,” he sniffs, mock seriousness radiating from his face even as he pulls away to the sound of her renewed laughter.

“You are  _really_ hung up on  _The Princess Diaries_  today -”

“Uh, can you blame me? Julie Andrews  _and_ Anne Hathaway? They should’ve just stopped making movies after they made that one -”

“But then we wouldn’t have gotten the sequel.”

He tuts, shaking his head in something like disbelief. “This is why I married you,” he says seriously. “Now get up you lazy bum, I know what we’re doing today.”

“Are we spending the one month anniversary of our wedding and our only day off this week watching  _The Princess Diaries_?”

“ _No_.”

“Are we watching  _The Princess Diaries_ and the sequel?”

“ _Maybe_.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ANONYMOUS ASKED: have an idea for an au: (not expecting you to write it, tho feel free!! just wanted to share) you ever think about what would have happened if it was amy and rosa who worked with hawkins, rather than rosa and jake?

The razor blade is inexplicably cold against Amy’s palm.

It shouldn’t be cold, considering it was beneath Rosa’s tongue for no one knows how long, but it is cold, and it’s sharp, and it’s the only solid thing her mind can process right now.

Somewhere behind her, Jake sits between Gina and his promise to never stop fighting and to wait for her, however long it takes. And she knows on some level that whatever he’s feeling right now is just as intense as what she’s feeling, just the same as she would were their roles reversed.

But she can’t process that right now. Because there’s a razor blade whose corners are digging into her palm and the word  _guilty_ is reverberating around her skull like the super bouncy ball Jake hurled into the holding cell six years ago. Blood rushes through her ears in a deafening roar and she’s utterly frozen on the spot. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

“ _Amy_ ,” Jake’s voice is a distant siren through the roar, and maybe it isn’t the razor blade that’s so cold - maybe it’s her. Because she’s got it clutched in her left hand and that’s the hand he most often holds when they’re strolling through the farmer’s market or down the sidewalk or through the parking garage on their way into work in the mornings. She’s cold and there’s a raised bar between them, a deep oak barrier that may as well be twenty feet tall for the wedge suddenly driven between them.

She can’t look at him. She can’t bear to see his face like that - shattered with the news of yet another abandonment.

“ _Amy_ \- Ames,  _please_.” he sounds more urgent now and there are guards coming toward her, handcuffs in their hands, and she struggles to remember how to swallow, how to breathe. “Amy,  _look at me_.”

She inhales once, twice, and then forces her knees to come unlocked to stumble to her right, hip knocking painfully into the edge of her table. The razor blade falls from her hand, and her palm is slick with blood.

Jake’s practically falling over the banister, eyes bugging out of his head as he glances between Amy and the guards. “I love you, okay?” She can feel herself nodding, but what he’s saying really only registers at an instinctual level. “It’s gonna be okay, Ames, okay? We’re gonna get you out - I love you, I love you so much -”

She propels herself toward him without a thought and he catches her, his hands just as desperate as she suddenly feels where they splay across her back. He kisses hard, and harder still, and there’s a hurricane in her chest trying to claw its way out.

“I love you,” he reminds her in a whisper when the guard behind her back has a grip around her upper arm, pulling her away. “I love you so much,” he says as Amy fights the urge to wrench her arm away. “I love you, Amy!” he shouts as she stumbles away, hands cuffed behind her back, the guard’s grip around her arm the only reason she doesn’t collapse right there on the spot.

It’s not til right before her line of sight is broken that she realizes she must have touched Jake’s face in her desperation - her blood is smeared across his cheek. It’s the last image she has before the door slams shut and the sobs come broken and hoarse.

* * *

They allow her two pictures in her cell.

One is of the two of them, the cruise ship from their first year together the background. It’s a selfie she took on the walk back to their room from the salsa dancing class - they’re both making silly faces, but it’s the look in their eyes that really gets her. The look of giddiness, of sheer joy; the look of being totally in love and finally getting to say the words.

It’s no replacement for actually hearing him say it, but it’s enough to sustain her between phone calls.

The second one is another selfie, but only of him - one he sent her on his day off a year earlier. He’s sprawled across their couch and part of his face is covered beneath her favorite blanket, and he’s smiling up at the camera with that soft secret smile. When he sent it he’d done so to tease her - it was his response to her complaining about her shift seeming so much slower without him there to entertain her - but she’d found the whole thing so endearing and cute that she’d gone and saved it immediately. She even had it as her background for a weekend, just to mess with him.

The sight of it staves off the loneliness stinging at her heart.

Her cellmate is a convicted cannibal who has taken a keen interest in befriending her and Rosa’s in a different cell block entirely and at night Amy shivers beneath the threadbare blanket given to her on her first day from a combination of the general chill of cinder block walls at midnight and the haunting sounds of the women in the cells around hers crying.

(Amy cries, too - muffled into her pillow, her right palm flattened against Jake’s selfie.)

* * *

“I can’t believe I’m hearing your voice right now,” Jake murmurs.

His voice is so warm and familiar and Amy could honestly swear it sounds as good as his hug felt the day before. “I know,” she breathes into the mic on her headphones, peering up over the top of her book to ensure no one has caught onto what she’s doing in this dusty forgotten corner of the library. “It’s so amazing. I’ve missed you  _so much_ , Jake.”

She hears him exhale heavily on the other end of the line - and that feeling she got when she saw him yesterday, the feeling of being able to see right through him, like he’s seconds away from cracking open and spilling all over the floor is back in full force. “Babe, you have  _no idea_  how much I’ve missed you.”

Whatever portion of her chest made whole by the sound of his voice shatters now.

“Are you sure it’s safe for you to have this phone?” She blinks and the top of the warden’s shiny bald head is bobbing between the rows of shelves, headed straight toward her.

“Uh - shit - I have to go.”

She rips the ear pieces out of her ears as fast as she can, but it’s not fast enough to cut Jake’s mildly panicked “ _Amy?_ ” off, or for the warden to not see that she’s clearly hiding something in the book that has fallen into her lap.

“Santiago, my office. And bring the cell phone.” he snaps, and her gut fills with dread.

* * *

Within a week, Amy finds herself alone in her cell, desperately trying to chisel the end of her plastic toothbrush into something vaguely resembling a shank. Her cellmate is lying in the hospital wing and a sociopath mob boss is somewhere out there plotting to kill her and she’s having to fight off the strong urge to just curl up in the fetal position on her bunk and never get up again.

(She’s wasting time - she should be on the phone with Jake, reveling one last time in the comfort his voice brings her while reminding him that she loves him and to keep watering the plants, but he didn’t pick up when she tried calling him upon getting back here from the yard and they start serving dinner in an hour, so.)

She feels almost as desperate as she did when that guilty verdict first hit her ears - which is what makes the warden’s voice ringing loud through the cell block that much more disorienting. “Santiago!” he shouts, and she drops her toothbrush, ready to surrender. “You’re being discharged.”

Wait. Wait. “ _What_?”

“Your squad.” he says with a shrug, appearing completely unconcerned with her obviously malfunctioning brain. “You’re free.”

* * *

Jake brought a spare hoodie with him.

It shouldn’t be the the first thing she notices when the door between her and the waiting lobby opens, but it is - it’s dangling by the hood from his left hand, the sleeves just barely brushing along the floor. He’s standing, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the motion of a thick swallow, and for the first time Amy feels herself beginning to believe that this might actually really be over.

He drops the hoodie and half a second later she’s in his arms, swept off her feet, face buried in his shoulder. He smells like coffee and gun powder and home.

She’s home.

* * *

“Guys,” Jake calls over the din of celebration, and the voices around them die down at once. He’s got an arm slung around her shoulders and he draws her in close, and when she curls her arm around his waist she catches Charles choking back tears at the sight of her fingers curled tight around the material of Jake’s hoodie. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I decided I wanted to marry Amy all on my own.”

She’s warm, warm all over as he sets out describing the evening of April 28th - and she makes a mental note to tell him, later, about the moment she recognized he is her soul’s perfect home.


	3. Chapter 3

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Peralta, but there will be a cancellation fee.”

Jake bites out a sigh, tightening his grip around his phone for a moment. His breath is warm and it fogs against the window to his right; the steam is slick against his forehead when he tilts his head to the side, the sound of his head connecting to the glass louder and more hollow than he was expecting. “Yeah,” he grunts, shifting to extract his wallet from his back pocket. “I figured.”

He reads out his credit card number and then lets his gaze drift, the sounds of the woman on the other end of the line tapping away at a keyboard only dimly registering in his mind. It’s getting late and the sun is starting to set behind the clouds hanging low overhead; streetlights are beginning to ignite along the sidewalks still teeming with people, the lights pouring out through various storefronts seeming to grow brighter, and in a coffee shop some fifty feet ahead of where the car is parked Jake catches a glimpse of Amy standing near the front of a long line of people.

In her hand he sees a flash of orange - the Post-It upon which the details of his order are neatly written - and despite his annoyance with the world in general at that moment, he can’t quite fight off the quiet affection that floods his heart at the sight.

“Alright, Mr. Peralta,” the woman on the phone says just as Amy’s hands flatten against the coffee shop’s front counter, “I’ve gotten that all taken care of. Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

“Nope. Just the cancellation, thanks.”

“Of course, sir. Have a good evening, and happy Valentine’s Day.”

He tries to muster up some semblance of enthusiasm - just enough to echo the sentiment - but all he can manage is a disgruntled grunt of some kind, and then the line goes dead.

Amy emerges with two paper cups in hand five minutes later, and he watches her approach through his lashes, fighting hard against the urge to lock the doors on her as a joke. It’s fourteen degrees outside, and he’s fairly certain he’d end up with two full cups of piping-hot coffee dumped over his head if he extended the amount of time she has to spend outside, even if it’s only by a few seconds.

Instead he reaches across the center console and throws her door open for her, reaching for both cups as she quickly rounds the open door. “Thanks,” she mumbles as she quickly climbs inside and slams the door behind her.

The next few minutes are mostly quiet. He listens to her shiver and shift, trying to warm her hands up around her cup and also beneath her thighs. She’s really unfairly cute when she gets like this - she gets all drawn in on herself, hunkered down like she’s trapped in a snow storm - and despite the thick cloud of annoyance hanging over his head and the chill seeping into his own fingertips, he finds himself fighting off another affectionate grin.

“I  _hate_ the cold,” she announces once the shivering has died off. This time he doesn’t bother hiding his smile - she’s paying him no mind anyways, her gaze already scanning the horizon with practiced care, only flickering down to her cup occasionally. “There’s no reason for it. Why? Why does it have to be so cold?”

He studies her profile a moment longer - the reddened tip of her nose, the disgruntled downward pull of the corners of her mouth, the irritated furrow of her brow - before he sighs, slower and longer than before, and drops his gaze back down to his cup. “I dunno, babe.” he murmurs.

From his peripheral he sees her head turn toward him. “What’s up?”

This question is softer than the previous two; a glance up confirms that her expression has softened as well. It’s something like concern shining deep in her eyes now.

Objectively, it’s ridiculous that this is even happening. He’s a grown man, for Christ’s sake - a grown man who is engaged to the woman sitting across from him - but still, he’s bitter, and screw objectiveness anyways.

Objectivity is for the birds.

“I’m just - it’s Valentine’s Day.” Understanding washes over her - literally, from head to toe, her whole body shifts. “And I know you don’t even like this stupid holiday or whatever, okay,” he says loudly, cutting her off before she has a chance to interrupt. “And I also know that we’ve been together for the past, like, two or three Valentine’s Days - but this is the only one we’re gonna get as fiances, y’know? And I wanted - I was gonna make it, um, kinda special. I had a plan - I had reservations and stuff. It was gonna be really nice, but then this stupid stakeout had to happen, and…I dunno, I’m just a little, like…I dunno.”

She’s got that look on her face again - the one that makes his heart feel like it’s fluttering in his chest - and when she reaches across the center console to touch his forearm, her hand is warm from the coffee. “Jake,” she murmurs, and his face is burning. “You’re -” she stops and shakes her head, and then starts again. “You are literally the sweetest, most kind and thoughtful and attentive person I’ve ever met.”

He covers her hand with his own and tilts his head to the side, until it’s leaning against the headrest.

“I’m sorry tonight isn’t going the way you’d hoped,” she says, a genuine apology flashing in her eyes - right before mischief takes its place. “But hey, it could be worse! You could be here with Rosa or Charles…or  _Hitchcock_.”

He gags, pulling his arm out of her reach, pretending to retch into the floorboard to the sound of her laughter. “You’re right, you’re right,” he groans as he straightens up again. “It could be a  _lot_ worse.”

Her giggles taper off into a warm, comfortable quiet, and when he turns to face her again she’s all awash with the kind of affection that never fails to steal his breath away. “I love you so much,” she murmurs softly, shaking her head slowly like she’s still marveling that any of this is even real.

He knows the feeling.

“I love you so much, too,” he breathes right before he tugs her across the console. She meets him in the middle and they sink into a kiss that sends warmth pooling in his chest and throbbing in his heart.


	4. you clicked your heels and wished for me

She’s not sure if it’s instinct or her skills as an amazing detective-slash-genius, but Amy knows from the moment she steps into their apartment that  _something_ is off.

“Jake?” she calls cautiously, head turned toward the interior of their apartment to listen all the harder as she blindly hangs her purse on the hooks by the front door. She gets no answer, but in the silence she can hear movement in the living room; a quiet grunt rings out like a gunshot as she toes her shoes off and sweeps them under the IKEA-brand bench beneath the hooks where her purse now hangs.

She stays quiet as she pads down the short hallway past the kitchen doorway and into the living room, just to find her fiancé seated in the center of the couch, hands behind his back, a wide, nervous grin spread across his face. She falters at the sight of such clear and obvious guilt, and then pauses altogether as she catches sight of the open container on the coffee table before him.

“Why is the butter in the living room?” she asks.

(Somewhere across the span of time and space, 2010 Amy is having an aneurysm.)

“I…was eating toast,” he says, stock-still save for his widening eyes and barely-moving lips.

She feels her own eyes narrow beneath her furrowing brow.

“Popcorn,” he says a bit louder than before, and she arches a brow. “It was - popcorn toast. And butter. We’re out of peanut butter, so…butter.”

She takes a step forward, tilting her head to the left, and from this new angle she’s afforded a view of the butter. Which is currently riddled with holes.

With a sigh and a single hip cocked, she lets her gaze linger on the butter for a moment longer before returning to Jake’s face - which is somehow folded impossibly further with even more guilt than before. “What did you do?” she asks calmly.

“It’s - I was - uh -” he releases a nervous laugh and reaches to scratch behind his ear with his left hand. A glint of gold around his ring finger catches her attention.

“Are you wearing your wedding ring already?” she asks, moving forward to perch on the couch beside him. He lowers his hand to his lap, but she catches it before his palm makes contact with his thigh; the sight of the thin, simple band wrapped snugly around the base of his finger sends a pulse of giddiness through her veins.

(He’s gonna be her  _husband_.)

“They came in the mail today,” he says as she runs the pad of one thumb over the band, “and you said to take them out and to try mine on to make sure it fits.”

Suddenly, the puzzle pieces fall into place. “Is that why you have the butter out? Is it too small?”

“ _Mine_ isn’t.”

She stares, and then it clicks. “Oh, Peralta,” she sighs.

Sheepishly, he pulls his right hand from behind his back - and sure enough, a gold band that matches the one on his left hand save for size is settled solidly just beneath the second knuckle of his ring finger. “You have  _tiny_ hands,” he says in a way she thinks might be an attempt at a joke.

She doesn’t laugh. She just stares - first at his hand, and then at him. “Why would you…why?” she finally manages.

He stares for a minute, blinks his wide eyes twice. “Double married,” he finally mutters, face flushing appropriately with embarrassment.

( _He’s_ gonna be her husband.)

She lets another sigh escape her chest, briefly closing her eyes and reaching to pinch the bridge of her nose. His hands land against her thigh, warmth seeping through the unforgiving material of her slacks, thumb caressing absently (or, perhaps, anxiously). “How long have you been trying to get it unstuck?” she asks as she drops her hand back to her lap.

“Like, an hour. Or three.”

“Okay, I’m gonna get some ice.”

Ten minutes later, Jake’s right ring finger is completely numb and Amy’s ring is safely seated back in the ring box cushion on the coffee table. “I can’t believe you ruined an entire tub of butter playing with these rings,” Amy teases as she hauls the butter off toward the kitchen.

“I didn’t ruin it!” he says indignantly, right hand sandwiched beneath his thigh.

“Your finger was all up in the butter, that’s the definition of ruined!”

“Don’t tell me you’re worried about my cooties now -”

“I could care less about your cooties, Jake, what I’m worried about is the fact that you literally never wash your hands and you have actual  _gardens_ under your nails -”

“Just for that I’m not giving you any of my nail flowers,” he sniffs, and she laughs as she drops the butter into the trash can. “Hey, come back.”

She peers around the kitchen doorway and finds him kneeling beside the couch, her wedding band in his hand and a broad grin on his face. “What are you doing?”

“Amy Santiago,” he says, voice dancing with laughter, “will you please do me the honor of making sure that this wedding ring fits?”

She fully emerges from the kitchen, pretending to swoon as she steals toward him. “It’s just so sudden,” she says once she’s close enough for him to hold her hand. “I - I don’t know what to say…”

“Just say you’re a size six,” he urges, squeezing her hand.

“I’m…I’m a  _size six_!”

He lets out a bright laugh as pulls the ring from the box and, after she quickly pulls her engagement ring off of her finger, he slides the thin band home. “Check that out Cinderella,” he says as he quickly gets to his feet, her left hand still clutched in his right. “It’s a perfect fit.”

Amy smiles as she replaces the engagement ring, and he flattens his left hand mid-air beside hers. For a moment, they just stare down at their rings in silence.

“Wow,” he says softly. She glances up through her lashes to find his expression soft with wonder, eyes still trained on their hands.

“Yeah,” she breathes, and his gaze flicks up to her face.

“I…” he stops and shakes his head. “I really can’t wait to be married to you, Ames.”

She reaches to grasp his hand with both of hers, and pulls him forward and into a kiss.

( _He’s gonna be her husband._ )

“You’re gonna be my husband,” she murmurs when they break apart a moment later, and his answering smile is bright enough to light up an entire galaxy.

“You’re gonna be the dopest wife in  _history_!” he declares, before his excitement falters. “Dopest…most dope?”

“I don’t think there’s a right answer to that, babe.”

“Whatever it is, you’re it. Like, the most it ever.”

Jake tugs her forward and into another kiss before she can formulate her next response and she lets herself melt into it - into him - before reality catches up to her again. “Mm,” she hums against his lips. “We need - rings -”

“Got ‘em,” he mutters, both of his hands now somehow tangled in her hair at the base of her skull.

“No,” she finally pushes him away enough to free her lips, and a laugh almost escapes her chest at the deeply disgruntled expression on his face. “We need to take them off and put them away before something else happens.”

“First of all, I find that offensive and insulting but because you’re the dopest future wife in the whole galaxy I’ve already forgiven you, and secondly, why can’t I just…wear this until the wedding?”

“Because it’s your wedding ring, not your engagement ring. Do you  _want_ an engagement ring? We can go get one tomorrow after work -”

“I just really hate the feeling of not being married to you yet,” he interrupts - and beneath the joking tone, she senses the faintest touch of honesty.

She smiles, holding his gaze, and gently shimmies the ring off of his finger. “Two more months,” she reminds him softly, and his smile turns wistful.

“Longest two months in history,” he sighs as she quickly pulls her own ring off. She graces him with an empathetic grimace before stepping around him toward the ring boxes sitting forgotten on the coffee table.

“It’ll be here before you know it,” she says as she tucks the rings away.

“Well, you owe me one for not letting me wear my ring yet.”

She turns slowly at the suggestive tone of his voice, finding him grinning cheekily. “Do I?” she asks, and he nods. “Name your price.”

“We go to our room and I show you how to  _actually_ ruin a tub of butter -”

“Oh, my god, no!” she shouts, her voice nearly lost beneath his laughter. “Are you kidding me? Is that supposed to be sexy?”

“The only food sexier than butter is ranch dressing, ask Charles!”

“I want a divorce!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [follow me on tumblr](http://elsaclack.tumblr.com/)


	5. you look happy to me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a 2-second peek into a Sound of Music AU

The ball is several hours underway by the time Amy manages to track her children down again - out on the terrace of all places. The doors are propped open to welcome the balmy summer breeze rippling through the curtains (the ones that miraculously survived the  _dress_ incident of a few weeks ago), and though the sounds of her guests in fellowship around her and the gentle sounds of the string quartet in the corner command most of her auditory attention, the boisterous male laughter she’s grown all-too-familiar with rings clear and true above the rest.

Of  _course_ her children are with Jake.

(She wonders if the day she trusts her nanny to properly watch her children will ever come.)

She pauses just beyond the doorway, allowing the curtain to fall in such a way that her figure is concealed behind it. Her children have gathered in a loose throng and in the center she spies Jake, his attention focused down on one of the shorter children, a bright and encouraging grin igniting his face. There’s a certain level of excitement in his eyes and he nods rapidly at whatever her child (she’s yet to catch a glimpse but she’s fairly certain it’s Hannah) is saying, and then he begins gesticulating wildly as he speaks. He bobs his head slowly and rhythmically - along with the beat of the music from inside, she notes - and then he gestures for Hannah to come closer, to take his outstretched hand. A smaller hand suddenly appears on his shoulder and he nods, his smile never faltering.

They begin to dance on the next downbeat, and after a few brief seconds she realizes Jake is leading Hannah through a rather clumsy Ländler. She raises a hand absently to cover her smile, a quiet laugh escaping through her nose, as Jake tries to spin while Hannah struggles to follow.

It’s the way that he immediately kneels to get on Hannah’s level once their hands break on the turn that propels Amy forward.

Jake is the last to notice her. Her children immediately straighten upon spotting her from the corners of their eyes, but beyond a smile and a nod she makes no further comment, so they relax after only a moment. Jake looks around a half-second after Hannah does; he stands and straightens as well, looking bemused.

“I see you’re teaching them how to dance now,” she says once she’s close enough to be heard without either of them straining.

His bemusement shifts into amusement, his gaze flicking down to Hannah before leveling on Amy once again. “I am,” he nods. “Maya asked, so I walked her through it, and then Hannah asked for a turn -”

“I’m next!” Ana calls from the middle of the throng.

“You are,” Jake confirms.

“I didn’t realize you knew the Ländler.”

His brows raise, clearly impressed. “I didn’t realize they taught classic folk dances in the Austrian military.”

A smile twitches across her face. “I’m cultured,” she says, and he chuckles quietly.

“Knowing the name of the dance and actually knowing the dance are two very different things, Captain.”

There’s a challenge in his eyes, echoed in his voice - and suddenly the fact that her ballroom is full of guests fades to the furthest reaches of her mind.

She steps toward him and he raises his hand at the same time, and they immediately begin to step along to the beat of the music. She’s only vaguely aware of her children standing behind her - only really processing Benji stealing forward to pull Hannah out of their way. The vast majority of her focus is lost in the warm chocolate eyes gazing intently down at her.

He leads her through the dance flawlessly, a small smile on his face the entire time, up until the very end. It’s as they begin to spin in tandem with their arms tightly crossed that his smile fades - and suddenly her heart is in her throat. He’s so close,  _so_ close, and the humor that seems to constantly exude from his very being has vanished completely. He looks at her as if she is a priceless treasure, a most rare gemstone; he looks at her the way her late husband looked at her.

The music inside the ballroom ends and their movements stop, but neither one dares break their embrace. It’s almost as if his gaze has pierced right through her, immobilizing her, paralyzing her; from her peripheral she can see him swallow thickly.

She releases a shuddering exhale, and the spell breaks.

Jake steps away slowly, taking care to lower their joined hands before releasing his grip. Her fingers automatically curl inward, nails digging into her palms, and Jake backs away until a full meter of space is between them.

The night around them may be muggy and warm, but when she turns back toward the party and catches a glimpse of Teddy’s back retreating, she feels ice cold.


	6. that i need you because it’s so hard to be who i am

Amy empties out her desk about an hour after Vin leaves. 

It’s hard, in that moment, to put a name to the sinking feeling in the pit of his gut. Because it’s a  _happy_ occasion, it’s a joyful step forward for his bride-to-be, and they spend the half-hour or so that it takes to box everything up giggling and laughing at each momento they find in her drawers. She has a surprisingly large number of non-functional knick-knacks hidden away between her file folders and homemade disinfectant spray, so between neatly packing her stationary and rubber-banding up all of her replacement ink fills for the nice fountain pen her brother got for her on her last birthday, they spend a considerable amount of time trekking down memory lane. 

It’s hard not to notice the fact that she only seemed to start collecting things about a year before Captain Holt took over as their commanding officer. She merely blushes when he points this out.

But then it’s 7:30 and the last of her belongings are finally unloaded and carefully placed in and on her new desk and she’s straightening up the last picture of the two of them from the night they got engaged right beside her brand new computer monitor while she talks about what they should order for dinner (she’s been dealing with a hankering for good Chinese food ever since Vin mentioned the authentic Chinese cuisine he ate the last time he was in Tianjin and Jake is definitely  _not_ still vaguely jealous of the general lifestyle Vin leads) and Jake’s stomach is hollow, hollow, hollow. 

That’s what makes the rumbling so loud, he thinks. 

Amy arches an amused brow when his stomach practically  _wails_ at the mention of fried rice. “So we’ll double up on the egg rolls, then?” 

He grins as he nods, but even he can feel that it’s not quite touching his eyes. “Sounds perfect,” he says honestly. 

Her smile softens, edges tinged with concern, but she seems to decide against asking. “Let’s order from the car so the delivery time seems shorter,” she says as she slings her purse over her shoulder. 

“I’ve totally rubbed off on you,” he says mock-smugly, and she grins cheekily in return as she rounds her new desk and reaches to take his arm. “Lemme just run back upstairs and grab my bag from my desk.” 

She pauses, hand outstretched toward him. “Oh, d’you want me to go with you?” 

“No, it’s okay. I’ll just meet you at the car?” 

Slowly, her hand falls back to her side. She’s got that look on her face again - pensive and curious, like he’s a particularly difficult case she’s on the verge of cracking but she can’t quite find that final missing piece. “Okay,” she says, pacing backwards toward the elevator, seamlessly merging into oncoming beat cop traffic. “Two minutes?” 

“Ten-four,” he salutes, and she salutes back, and he waits until the elevator doors have slid shut before releasing a long, slow breath. 

This new desk is set up pretty much exactly the way her old desk upstairs is set up, with the exception of the new filing cabinet off to the left hand side and the fact that this new monitor is so slim it takes up about half of the depth that her old one did. It leaves more room for the little knick-knacks she’d hidden away upstairs - like the plastic police-woman figurine, who’s down on one knee with her gun drawn, a little chip of paint missing on the left lens of her dark sunglasses. She’s part of the set Jake has sitting on his own desk - positioned right, and she fits right up against the open door of the squad car, in front of the police-man figurine, whose feet are spread shoulder-width apart so that he can stand over the woman’s bent leg and fire his little plastic gun over her head. He’d had it for ages before he met Amy, and had kept the entire set for a few years after she came to the Nine-Nine. He’d only given her the woman from the set toward the end of a week-long marathon murder case, and that was only because he was so deliriously tired he couldn’t even think straight. 

At least, that’s what he’d told himself at the time. 

He gingerly plucks the figurine up off of Amy’s desktop and examines it closely. It’s almost exactly the same as he remembers it - though her plastic hair is a bit more orange than red. He runs the pad of his thumb over the smooth surface of the little blue hat - a move he used to pull often when he was anxious and fidgety upstairs - and then carefully replaces it exactly where he found it. 

The night crew is still in briefing when Jake makes it upstairs, so his bag is still sitting exactly where he left it - which is to say in the exact center of his desk, fallen to the side, contents just beginning to spill everywhere - but, still, he falters and stops in his tracks. 

Amy’s desk is empty. 

It’s suddenly very difficult to breathe. 

Which is pretty stupid, all things considered. The sight of his partner’s desk empty and barren should be far less striking than it is, especially since he’s seen his own desk just as empty and barren  _twice_  now, for far more terrifying reasons than a promotion. He should be happy, then. He should be happy. 

But her desk is empty and someone else is going to sit there eventually and they won’t know him. They won’t immediately know how to play finish the lyrics with him when it’s slow and he’s bored, they won’t know that only  _he_ is allowed to sing along to the Backstreet Boys when their songs come up on shuffle, they won’t be able to tell what mood he’s in by what flavor of Pringles he’s eating or even that  _Die Hard_  is the best movie in the history of cinema. They won’t try to huck jelly beans at his head when he’s not paying attention or do wild dances in the middle of the bullpen floor when they solve a grueling case at 3 AM or walk around in those big clunky sensible heels or know what he means when he says he feels  _fizzy_ and  _Amy’s desk is empty._

He clenches his shaking hands into fists down at his sides. 

He’s not sure how long he just stands there staring at it, but eventually the briefing room doors swing open and the bullpen is full of the din of beat cops chatting and over the noise, he hears a familiar voice calling his name. Amy’s skirting around the beat cops, fighting against the flow of traffic to get to where he’s rooted to the spot. As he watches a few of the beat cops seem to recognize her; a few of them point, a few wave, one even breaks away from the crowd to shake her hand. She greets them all with a polite - and  _completely thrilled_  - smile on her face that only fades when she’s standing in front of him and his body mostly blocks her from view. “Is everything okay? What’s going on?”

There’s a little crease in her brow, more prominent on the left brow than on the right, and when Jake blinks a thousand images flash behind his eyelids of this expression, framed by a thousand different hairstyles and a thousand different circumstances. He feels her hand on his arm and nearly shivers at her touch - surely whoever sits at her desk won’t ever draw this kind of reaction out of him. No one will ever be able to read him as easily and fluently as Amy does, and just how the hell is he supposed to rely on someone else out in the field when the best partner he’s ever had now sits an entire world away from him? 

“Your desk,” is all he manages to get out before the words seem to grind to a halt right there in his throat. A brief spark of confusion ignites in her eyes before understanding snuffs it out; she glances over her shoulder at that long stretch of flawless, sparkling faux-wood-grain surface in question, and her grip around his arm grows tighter. 

“I’m just gonna be downstairs,” she says softly as she turns back to face him. “Plus, we live together. We’ll still see each other every day -” 

“I don’t care about - I mean, I mean I  _do_ care about that, but that’s not what’s - I’m just -” he stops and tilts his head back, releasing a loud breath, focusing on the way her thumb rubs against his bicep through his flannel in a slow and soothing motion and not on the fact that his ribs feel like they’re clattering together in an earthquake. “You’re the best partner I’ve ever had,” he finally manages to croak. Her thumb goes still. “You’re my best friend and my fiancée, and I really am  _so_ happy and  _so proud_  of you, but…but your desk is empty and I don’t know who’s gonna sit there next and that kinda freaks me out.” 

His confession hangs between them for all of three seconds before her hands are on his back and her head is against his chest and the earthquake dies down at once. He pulls her in closer, forgetting her rules about workplace-appropriate behavior and no-PDA the moment the scent of her achingly familiar strawberry shampoo drowns out the stale coffee and gunpowder that seems to cling to the very air here. He buries his nose in her hair and breathes deep, and the ache of her empty desk isn’t quite so stinging anymore. He still closes his eyes to block out the sight of it when he turns his head to kiss her temple, though. 

“Jake,” she says softly when she pulls away a few moments later. “You know that you and I got  _insanely_ lucky, right? I mean, most partners don’t end up falling in love or getting married. Just because you fell in love with your last partner doesn’t mean you’re destined to hate your next one. And, who knows? Maybe Holt will move Rosa or Charles into that desk. Or maybe you can steal it and finally have that mega-desk you always used to talk about.” 

He snorts, and runs his hands down her arms until her hands catch in his. “Yeah, maybe. But a mega-desk won’t make me a better detective, and neither will Charles or Rosa. I got better because of you. I guess I’m just…sad to be losing that.” 

Her eyes flick down to his lips as she smiles, and then her hands are framing his face and she’s up on the balls of her feet to kiss him. The taste of her spearmint toothpaste has mostly faded from her post-lunch brush, leaving room for that taste he’s yet to put an actual name to - comfort, joy, home,  _her_  - and every cell in his body seems to go peacefully still at the gentle pressure of her lips against his. 

Slowly, they break apart, and Jake’s suddenly aware of the fact that his hands are on her hips, skimming lightly along her back, beneath her blazer, just above the waistband of her slacks. “You’re not losing anything, Jake,” she murmurs, curling her fingers against his cheek at such an angle that the edges of her engagement ring barely catch against the scant amount of stubble he’s grown over the course of the day. 

He tilts his head up to press a slow kiss to her forehead, lingering until his heart doesn’t feel quite so close to the edge of bursting. 

“C’mon,” she says as she turns back toward his desk. “I’m starving and I already ordered the food, and I’m really not in the mood to chase some delivery guy down if we’re not home when he gets there.” 

He chuckles as he quickly shovels his belongings back into his bag and slings it over his shoulder. She’s already started toward the elevator but her hand is outstretched toward him; this time, he only spares a single glance backwards at her old desk before hurrying toward her and taking her hand. 

It’s just a desk, after all.


	7. je vais t’attendre là

On the morning of April 28th, Jake Peralta wakes to the smell of pancakes burning on the griddle. 

He can tell when he rolls just slightly on his side that the blankets have been pulled up and neatly tucked in over the other half of the mattress, but even that slight change in angle brings him in contact with a part of the mattress still warm from Amy’s sleeping body. His shirt is also still warm where it’s stretched across his shoulders - there’s even a spot on the back of his neck that is cooler than the rest, probably leftover from the kiss she pressed there before she rolled out of bed. 

He smiles as he rubs his fingertips over the spot. How she managed to burn breakfast in what is likely just a matter of  _minutes_ is entirely beyond him.

Her cursing is quiet and also entirely in Spanish when he shuffles out of their bedroom, movements frantic over the stovetop. Her back is to him, her hair messy where it’s pulled back out of her face, and though he’s still trying to decide between helping her and poking fun at her for yet another round of her famous burnt pancakes, he can’t stop his vision from locking in on that one lock of hair near the nape of her neck that didn’t quite make it into her ponytail. The phrase  _hot mess_  comes to mind; he has to bite his lip to keep from laughing out loud. 

“Ames, didn’t I tell you I let Charles borrow our fire extinguisher last week?” She jumps at the sound of his voice, her panicked expression quickly giving way to a more disgruntled one. “You know you’re not allowed to touch the stove unless the fire extinguisher is within three feet of your person.” 

“I’ve lived by myself for almost twenty years, Peralta, I know how to handle a stovetop.” 

He shoots a pointed look at the charred black remains of the pancakes still clinging to the griddle, before shifting that same expression up to her face. “Clearly.” 

“Oh, whatever. It’s not like I ever cook anymore. Now move, or else you can scrape these things into the trash can.” 

Dutifully, he steps out of her way, backing up until he feels the edge of the counter bump into the small of his back. She seems to be working hard at holding back a smile, purposefully avoiding his gaze as she methodically scrapes the spatula he brought from his apartment over the surface of her brother’s old griddle. Slowly, he edges toward the window over the sink, waiting until she seems more genuinely absorbed in what she’s doing before quickly undoing the latch and pushing the frame up to allow for the suffocating burning stench to escape. 

“There,” she says once the griddle is mostly clean, “that’s done. Now, d’you wanna explain to me why you gave the fire extinguisher to Charles?”

“It’s for the bachelor party,” he grins as he takes the griddle from her outstretched hands. “Don’t ask me any specifics ‘cause he’s keeping everything a secret. But he asked if we had one and I thought it’d be easier to just give it to him.”

She joins him by the sink, leaning back against the counter as he begins to scrub the griddle surface. “Are you excited for your bachelor party?”

“Oh hells yeah, one last night of freedom, are you kidding me?” There’s a certain unimpressed air about the look she’s giving him, in the faint curve of her smile and the quick roll of her eyes, that tells him she’s caught on immediately to his joke. “What about you? Y’all gonna bring a stripper into the living room?”

“Absolutely. A stripper dressed like a cop.”

“Well, duh, what else is he supposed to be wearing? Or, uh,  _not_ wearing?”

“As long as he’s not dressed like a tin man, I’m good.”

He nearly drops the dish scrubber from the sudden laughter that bubbles up from his gut. Amy dissolves too, hands rising to her face to tuck her hair behind her ear, and in the pure sunlight pouring in through the window at her back the diamonds in her ring spark and glitter.

All at once, emotion expands in his chest; this beautiful stunning hilarious amazing woman in front of him is wearing an engagement ring that he gave to her. She’s his fiancee. She’s going to marry him. She’s going to be his  _wife_.

It’s funny, really, how many times he’s had moments like these over the last few months. Well, the last year, really - in fact, it was on this day precisely one year ago he first allowed himself to test that word out. He’d watched her frowning at her phone as she rapidly typed out a message to the New York Times regarding their crossword puzzle fact-checking techniques and he’d thought,  _that’s Amy, my wife_.

It had felt unfairly, ridiculously, amazingly  _right_.

And here he is one year later engaged to his best friend and she’s laughing at her own joke while the last remains of her failed attempt at breakfast are washed down the drain and he’s elbows-deep in sudsy water and more in love that he’s ever been in his life.

“I love you,” he says as she giggles herself back into seriousness. Some of the amusement instantly transforms into affection; she slides closer, left hand rising to touch his face, and leans in until their lips meet in a slow, tender press. She seems none-too-eager to let go despite the fact that this kiss remains pleasantly chaste; slowly, she separates their lips, leaving their foreheads touching, their warmth mingling between her chest and his shoulder.

“I love you too,” she murmurs, and his eyes flutter open just in time to see her lips forming the last word. They stand that way for a moment longer before he tilts his head to kiss her again; her fingers curl into the neck of his shirt and his hair, respectively, and the griddle and dish scrubber slowly slide out of his hands.

“For the record,” he mumbles as he steps closer, “the bachelor party is gonna be fun, but the  _wedding_ is gonna be even funner.”

He moves a split-second before she does, arms still dripping from the nearly over-flooded sink wrapping instantly around her waist. She shrieks, hands now flat against his chest in a futile attempt at shoving him away, shirt and shorts already in danger of being soaked through. “It’s not enough that you insult me with  _more funner_ , but now you have to  _ruin_ my  _favorite pajamas_?”

“Your favorite pajamas that consist of paint-stained running shorts and my old academy shirt? Hate to break it to you, babe, but these PJ’s  _been_ ruined!”

“You’re the  _worst_!”

“Joke’s on you, you’re marrying me!”


	8. i’m on the edge of a broken heart

He gets home before Amy does.

Their apartment is still and quiet. It’s messier than Amy usually likes to leave it, but that’s no surprise, considering she’d left later than she normally does after he begged her to stay and eat breakfast with him. His hoodie from yesterday is still draped over the back of the couch, and her favorite blanket lies in a crumpled heap on the loveseat. His shoes kicked beneath the coffee table lie abandoned and forgotten, and the empty pizza box still sits atop the coffee table books after they polished it off the night before.

Truthfully, it’s not all that messy. But Jake knows his fiancee, he knows her like the back of his own hand, so he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that if a mess is the first thing she sees upon getting back home, the only thing she’s going to want to do is clean.

And that’s not fair. Because she’s currently exhausted and still drenched in toilet water, and the last thing he wants her to do upon getting home from this never-ending nightmare day is stress out over cleaning.

He leaves his messenger bag on the floor beside the bench to his left, tucked against the legs so as to be as small and space-saving as possible, and hangs his jacket on the hook by the door. He rolls the sleeves of his hoodie and his flannel beneath that half-way up his forearms, casts one last glance around their living room, and gets to work.

It really only takes about five minutes. Folding the pizza box up in that specific way Amy taught him nearly a year ago is by far the most time-consuming, but even that only takes a minute at most. He’s still bristling with energy, though, and the television screen is still coated by a fine layer of dust, so it doesn’t take much thought before he hauls out the stash of cleaning supplies from beneath the sink, plucks the bottle of furniture polish and the dust rag out from the rest, and starts back toward the living room.

That’s how she finds him. She comes through the front door to the sounds of him grunting from the effort, rounds the corner to the sight of him hopping on the balls of his feet, trying to reach the top shelf in her library nook.

“Jake?”

She still hasn’t changed clothes. Her sergeant’s button-up hangs from her crooked fingers and her purse from her crooked elbow, and though her shirt is still distinctly damp and her hair is, well,  _insane_ ,  _she’s_ somehow staring at  _him_ like he’s grown a second head.

Amy Santiago is a vision of beauty.

“Hey,” he says, suddenly winded by the mere sight of her. He falls back to his heels, lets his hands fall down to his sides, and watches as she slowly paces toward him. “I was just…I thought I might…clean.”

Aside from reaching to toss her shirt and purse across the chaise to his right, she remains very still. “You never clean.” she finally says after a long stretch of silence.

There is no inquisitiveness to her tone. There is no confusion in her face. It’s a statement of fact, yes, but the complete lack of emotion in her entire demeanor is a clear and flashing neon sign pointing to the calm before the storm.

The dust rag slips out of his fingers and falls to the floor at his feet. Neither one of them look down at it.

Like a shot from a cannon, they charge toward each other at once. Amy smells like sweat and stale water but he buries his nose in the crook of her shoulder anyways, breathing her in. Her arms wrap like vices around his shoulders and his neck, and though her entire body is leaning securely into his, he can feel just how hard she’s shaking. A wet spot - one entirely unrelated to the one her soaked shirt is causing - begins to spread across his shoulder, just beneath where her face is tucked; all at once, tears prick in his eyes.

He pulls her in her just a little bit closer, holds her just a little bit tighter.

“ _That was awful_ ,” Amy softly moans, sounding a breath away from full-on sobbing. “I was so worried about Rosa…”

“Me too,” he murmurs, letting his eyes flutter open for a brief moment before squeezing them shut again.

“I was, I just kept wondering what she was doing and what she was seeing, but - but -”

He strokes his thumb along her side and turns his head slightly so that his lips press lightly into the curve of her neck. “But what?” he whispers.

He feels her fingers tunnel up into his hair, nails scratching gently against his scalp. “But I also kept thinking about - about if  _you_ had been the one who responded to that call,”

She’s shaking even harder now, clinging to him like he’s the only thing keeping her upright - which is ironic, he thinks, considering  _she’s_ the only thing keeping  _him_ upright in this moment.

Tears are flowing freely down his face now, wetting what seems to be the only dry part of her shirt left. “Yeah,” he says hoarsely, letting a hand drift up her back to gently squeeze and knead the back of her neck. “I kinda kept thinking the same thing about you.”

She sniffles, and he feels her swallow hard, and then her lips are pecking against his collarbone through his shirt.

“And I also - I also started thinking about if, like, if I just - if I -” he stops, emotion suddenly cutting his own words off, and Amy continues her line of soft closed-mouth pecks along the line of his throat. “If something, uh, happened - happened to me. What would happen to you?”

He feels her pause against the underside of his jaw, and then she’s pulling back, breaking all contact save for her hands against his upper arms. There’s an unfamiliar look on her face, one that sends a shot of pain right through his chest to steal his breath away. “We need to actually have this conversation,” she says, so quiet, so serious, and all Jake can do is nod. “I need to not be covered in toilet water when we have it, though.”

It’s not until she’s in the shower and he’s ordering their dinner that he finally, belatedly recognizes the emotion on her face -  _grief_.

The food has just arrived when she emerges from their bedroom, damp hair now neatly combed and pulled back and away from her face, clad in clean, warm pajamas. His old t-shirt hangs off of her frame and for a brief moment he’s knocked nearly breathless by his own affection and attraction for the woman settling cross-legged into the couch beside him; he hands her a plate and leans down over her with the motion, catching her off-guard in a slow, chaste kiss.

A move like that usually earns him a playful smirk or a curious smile; now all that greets him is her, looking anxious and vulnerable, and his heart breaks.

“I love you,” he tells her with every ounce of sincerity in his body.

She reaches up to gently stroke his cheek with her left hand, thumb grazing lightly over his five-o’clock shadow. “I love you, too,” she murmurs.

He sits down beside her, scooting in close enough that her knee rests against his thigh.

“We should really talk about today,” she says. He turns his attention away from his lo mein, letting the fork he was using to uselessly push the noodles around drop against the side of his takeout box, shifting his upper body to face her more head-on. She, in turn, tucks her chop sticks beneath her noodles to weigh them down and lets her plate settle against her legs. “I…I honestly don’t even really know where to start.”

He waits a moment, watching her chew the inside of her own cheek, before he leans forward and takes her hand in his. “I do,” he says, pulling her a little closer, lifting her hand to press against his chest. “You’re the most important person in the world to me. If anything ever happened to you, I’d lose my mind. Like I would need to be institutionalized.” Though there are fresh tears visibly gathering in her eyes, she still chokes out a laugh; the sound is far more strained than what he’s used to, but it still soothes some part of him, down in his core. “You’re my life now, Ames. You’re my family. You mean everything to me. And if I lost you, I - I dunno. I can’t even think about it.”

Her tears stream down her face but she seems oblivious to it; gently, she digs the pads of her fingers into his chest.

“I would want you to be happy, though,” he suddenly says, and confusion cuts through her tears. "I’d want you to be happy and healthy, I wouldn’t want you to suffer -”

“So you get to totally lose your mind if I die, but I have to move on and be happy if you die? No, I don’t think so, Peralta, we’re either both moving on or we’re both losing our minds.”

“Amy -”

“No, I’m serious! This is why we need to have this conversation, Jake! We’re just a couple of weeks away from literally pledging the rest of our  _lives_ to each other. ‘Til death do us part, right? We need to talk about this. We need to fully understand what that means for us. Because I don’t want you to lose your mind. You are so good and so kind, and you’ve given our families and our friends and our colleagues so much joy over the years. If they’re gonna lose me, they shouldn’t have to lose you, too.”

He blinks, vision clouded with tears, and squeezes her hand still against his chest. “That’s exactly what I was trying to say before, about you.”

A small and tearful smile twitches across her face. “It would be really hard,” she admits softly, gaze darting down to their hands. “And I honestly don’t know if I would ever fully move on. You will always,  _always_ have a piece of my heart.” She pauses, jaw clenched, and Jake strokes his thumb over her fingers. “B-but I know you wouldn’t want me to - to close myself off,” she says, voice suddenly considerably higher than before, and his heart is breaking over and over and over again. “I would lean so heavily on all our friends and I would visit your mom as often as I could, and I would tell everyone -  _everyone_ about how  _amazing_ you are.”

He quickly swipes her plate out of her lap and slides it onto the coffee table, along with his own takeout box, before reaching for her with both hands and pulling her into him. They’re both crying now, fierce in the way they cling to each other, but somehow they manage to maneuver around so that Jake is laid out across the couch and Amy’s tucked in beside him, draped so completely over him that she’s practically lying on top of him.

The apartment is still and quiet and clean all around them, and slowly, for what feels like hours. Jake and Amy come completely undone in each others’ arms.

But it does eventually taper off. After a while it’s just them; just Amy’s fingertip doodling senseless patterns along Jake’s chest and his shoulder, just Jake’s fingers burrowing and tunneling through Amy’s now-messy hair. It’s quiet, and peaceful, and Jake turns his head to press a kiss against Amy’s forehead.

“I feel selfish about thinking about all of this while Rosa was actually the one in danger today,” Amy finally admits in a hushed whisper.

Jake shakes his head, letting his cheek bump lightly against Amy’s forehead. “Don’t,” he says softly, “it’s the natural place to go, mentally speaking. Terry went and updated his entire life insurance policy while we were waiting for news.”

She makes a soft noise, her hand lightly tapping against his chest. “I need to do that, too,” she mumbles. “I think my dad is still listed as the primary beneficiary on my policy, but I want to change it to you before we’re married.”

Jake tilts his head back, straining to look down at her face. “You have a life insurance policy?” he asks.

He feels her tense against him, before she slowly tilts her head back to meet his gaze. “You don’t?”

“I’m not exactly made of money, babe. Besides, do you know how many people have been murdered because of those things -”

“Oh my god, we’re calling first thing in the morning and setting one up for you -”

“Why, so you can kill me for the money some day?”

“Yeah, you caught me, after all of this emotional crying and declaring my undying love for you, you figured out that I’m only in this for the non-existent life insurance policy.”

His eyes still feel heavy from the crying and hers are most definitely bloodshot, but that doesn’t stop the laughter from bubbling up from his gut, or the blinding (albeit begrudging) smile that splits her face in half. She’s so beautiful - so perfect - and though this day has been full of uncertainty and terror and hypotheticals that will surely haunt his dreams for weeks to come, he can’t help but to revel in this moment of closeness with her.

So he shifts his hand from her back up to her neck, strokes his thumb against her jaw, and gently pulls her down to meet him for another slow, toe-curling kiss.

“I’m so thankful that we’ve had each other for this long,” he whispers against her lips. She tilts her mouth back slightly, letting her forehead rest against his. “And I’m so,  _so_ thankful for whatever time we have left together. I love you so much, Ames.”

Slowly, carefully, her lips slat back over his in a tender press. He loses himself in it for a moment, in the warmth of her proximity and the truly reverent way her left hand presses against his face. He’s so caught up in it, in fact, that his head actually comes up off the couch in an effort to follow her when she slowly pulls away.

“I love you so much, too, Jake,” she murmurs.

He gets his own life insurance policy the following afternoon, and on the line where it asks for the beneficiary to his plan, he writes  _Amy Santiago_ without a second thought.

(He has to go back and change it a few short weeks later, of course - considering Amy Santiago legally changed her name to  _Amy Santiago-Peralta_  - but that’s emotional for another reason entirely.)


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Okay so what about a fic based on pregnant amy santiago wearing a bathrobe?" - tumblr user issazey

The very first thing he notices upon arriving home from work is the sound of hammering coming from the bedroom.

It’s such an unexpected and out-of-place noise that it actually freezes him right there on the spot, halfway through the motions of dropping his messenger bag to the floor at his feet, head cocked, brows furrowed.

“Ames?” he calls uncertainly as the bag falls the rest of the way to the floor, and the hammering suddenly stops. It’s quiet, and then he hears a distant grunt from the same general direction as the hammering, and then -

Amy comes waddling around the corner - and if the sound of hammering was disorienting, it’s nothing compared to the vision that is his wife in this moment. Nine months pregnant and radiant as ever (even with the deep bruises beneath her eyes from lack of sleep and the general frizziness to her hair she no longer has the energy to straighten and tame every morning), she’s a five-foot-five-inch-tall tower of zebra-striped terry cloth. He can see his old Chewbacca slippers (stolen around month six of this pregnancy, right when her feet got too swollen to deal with her regular shoes around their apartment anymore) poking out beneath the robe (which is cinched above her belly, nearly around her chest) and, most confusingly, a hammer protruding from the shallow pocket sewn into the robe over her left hip.

So, he found the source of the hammering.

“Hey, babe!” she says brightly around the nail hanging like a cigarette from between her lips. “How was work?”

It occurs to him on some level that he’s still rooted to the spot, but he can’t quite wrap his mind around what he’s seeing in such a way that allows him to care. So he just lifts his hand, slowly, and points in her general direction. “Please tell me you were just playing a really loud recording of someone hammering something for fun.”

Confusion flits across her face, and she laughs. “No? I was just hanging some of the artwork my brother gave us at the baby shower last month -”

“ _Amy_ ,” he interrupts, exasperated, “you’re supposed to be on  _bed rest_!  _Doctor’s orders_!”

“I was!” She points to the couch, toward the rumpled and discarded blanket on one end and the empty water bottle on the coffee table nearby. “And now I’m hanging artwork.”

“Okay, honey,” he stops himself, briefly covers his face with both hands, and then moves toward her to quickly pluck the hammer and nail out of her pocket and mouth, respectively. “You can’t just - bed rest isn’t, like, a couple of hours each day. You can’t schedule in time between all the other stuff you feel like you have to do.” There’s an indignant quality about the look on her face, in the way she leans away from him and the way she watches him slide the hammer through his belt loop and tuck the nail into his pocket. “You need to be resting  _all the time_. And you tell me what you need to do, so I can do it for you. Yeah?”

“But - but the frames aren’t even that heavy, I can do it -”

“I know you can do it, babe, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should, y’know? Like me and guitar.”

This time it’s outrage that cracks across her expression, quick as lightning. “I’m  _way_ better at hanging artwork than you are at guitar.” she says, finger pointed at his chest in accusation. “How  _dare_ you.”

He laughs, though he can detect the genuine offense beneath her tone. “You’re absolutely right, you’re way better at hanging artwork than I am at playing guitar, I’m sorry I suggested otherwise,” he says as he steps to her side and slides an arm around her shoulders. “I just think it would be safer for you and for Peanut if you just took it easy for the next few days, that’s all. I can hang the artwork for you - not because you can’t, but because I want to. Is that okay?”

Though he can’t see her face from this angle, he can practically feel her pouting, and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “I want to watch,” she finally says as he steers her toward the bedroom.

“That’s kinky -”

She elbows him in the gut, and this time he does laugh, even as his free hand drops to cover the spot. “Idiot,” she mutters. “I want to make sure you do it right. I don’t want anything to be crooked.”

He stoops to pull the blankets back on her side of the bed and helps her ease in, leaning down to pull the Chewbacca slippers off her feet before helping to lift her legs up and to bring the blankets up over her belly, up to her chest. Once she’s satisfied with the number of pillows beneath her propping her up, he drops his hand to her belly briefly, and then steps back with a grin.

“I just have one question.”

“What?”

“Why the bathrobe? I thought you hated those things.”

A sheepish grin spreads across her face, accented by the blush creeping down from her ears. “My tool belt doesn’t fit anymore,” she mumbles, toying with the edge of their comforter. “This is the only other thing I could think of that was easy to get in and out of that has pockets.”

He can feel the amusement and the awe mingling in his face, so with a slow shake of his head, he leans back down toward her and kisses her. “I’d call you a genius if you weren’t so hard-headed about being dumb.” he says softly as he leans away.

 He’s not quite quick enough to escape her palm slapping flat against his bicep, or the pillow she hurls at his head - but she’s laughing, and relaxing in that dumb zebra-print bathrobe, and his heart is full.


	10. now that the weight has lifted, love has surely shifted my way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i straight up wrote this right before the actual wedding ep happened so there were a bunch of previews released but the ep itself had not yet aired haha

She finds him dismantling one of the flower pillars to the left of the arch. 

“Teddy.” Amy spits his name, taking care to sharpen the edges of her tone, and when he whips around to face her she briefly imagines the name piercing his chest. His gaze has gone all soft and dopey at the sight of her - furious as she is, even she has to admit she’s really rocking this dress, so on a certain level she gets it. Still, she hates him for seeing her in it before Jake.

Well, she hates him for a  _lot_ of things, now that she’s thinking about it.

“You need to go.” she tells him, hooking a thumb over her shoulder toward the front doors as she stalks down the aisle toward him.

“We haven’t finished sweeping the building yet -”

“I don’t care. I don’t care if you’re not done yet, I don’t care if your boss gets mad, I don’t even care if there really is a bomb - you need to leave,  _right now_. This is over. I’d honestly rather die in a huge explosion than spend one more second watching  _you_ try to ruin what is supposed to be the best day of my life.”

If he’s wounded by her words, he doesn’t show it. “Alright listen,  _bridezilla_ , I get that you’ve worked really hard to plan all of this, and it really is a beautiful wedding, but this is serious business and unfortunately your little shindig is just gonna have to  _wait_ -”

She takes care to slam her palms against his chest before she actually grips the straps of his Kevlar in her fists, yanking him down to her level, bringing their noses just inches apart. The rage is spewing out of her chest like lava, encompassing every part of her, turning the edges of her vision red - and she supposes some small portion of it must erupt across her expression, because she’s never seen this look of fear on Teddy’s face before, like he’s staring death in the face. “I don’t  _care_ ,” she says, voice low and even, “about  _anything_ you came here to do today. This day belongs to  _me and Jake_. So get out of our way.”

From her peripheral, she sees him swallow hard. “Like I said,” he manages to rasp, “you did a really great job organizing all of this and planning everything. This really is one of the most beautiful weddings I’ve ever not been invited to, but -”

“I didn’t. I didn’t do any of this. This was all Jake.” She releases Teddy’s Kevlar and takes a few steps back, lifting both arms to gesture all around the ceremony space. “He chose everything. He planned all of this. He took care of ordering everything and designing the arrangements and everything,  _everything_ you see. The only thing he didn’t pick was my dress. I’m  _completely in love with him_ , Teddy. That’s never going away, that’s never changing. I am in love with Jake Peralta, and you will never be able to touch that.” Her hands fall back to her sides and she huffs out a laugh, turning her head away slightly. “Y’know what? Just - just go ahead. Ruin it. I don’t care. It’s just a dumb ceremony anyways. I love Jake, and I know he loves me, and - and we don’t have to have some big fancy ceremony to prove it. I’m going to marry him,” she says slowly, firmly, “and there is nothing you can do to stop it.”

They stand several feet apart now, a sweltering silence expanding between them - and then slowly, without ever breaking eye-contact, Teddy reaches to his left and pushes the flower pillar over.  ****The responding crash is far louder than it would be otherwise in the deafening silence. Amy stares, open-mouthed, as Teddy slowly lowers his hand back to his side.

And then the rage is back in full-force.

She only manages to lunge forward a pace or two before two strong arms suddenly clamp down around her waist from behind, lifting her up off her feet. She kicks and claws at Teddy anyways as she’s forcibly turned to the side, away from Teddy; it’s not until she’s able to register the blessedly familiar scent of the cologne wafting off of the man whose chest is pressed hard against the backs of her shoulders that she finally regains some sense of calm.

“It’s okay,” Jake’s saying softly in her ear. “It’s okay, they’re just flowers, it doesn’t matter.”

Amy closes her eyes, trying to force her breathing back to a normal rhythm, focusing on the feeling of Jake wrapped so securely around her and not on the fact that she can still hear Teddy’s boots moving across the ceremony space. Jake’s breathing hard, too, loud through his nose, and when he turns his head she feels his flexed jaw brush against her ear through her hair.

It doesn’t make up for the fact that Teddy’s an  _ass_ \- but it does help, at least a little bit, to know that she’s not the only one upset right now.

She hears the side door swing shut, and as the sound reverberates through the room, it takes much of the fight out of her; she deflates, sagging slightly in Jake’s arms, failing to fight back the sense of defeat threatening to buckle her knees. Lucky for her, Jake seems prepared for this reaction; he holds her upright, tucking his face down to brush his lips over the curve of her neck, and this time when her eyes flutter closed it’s to focus on the steady, comforting warmth flooding her system.

Gently, she rests her hands against his arms, and his grip around her morphs from support to pure comfort. She lets her head tilt back to brush against his shoulder and feels his lips curl into a smile against her skin at the move; slowly, almost imperceptibly, he begins to sway from side to side, pulling her along with him.

“This has been a nightmare and a  _half_ ,” she mumbles, eyes still closed. He hums and nods against her. “Why didn’t we just elope?”

“‘Cause Charles would have tracked us down and murdered us if we tried.” Amy’s head falls forward again as a bright laugh escapes her throat, and Jake pulls her in closer, nuzzling his lips down into her neck for a few brief moments to muffle his own laughter.

Slowly, she steps away from him, keeping hold of one of his hands and allowing him to turn her on the spot, as if they’re dancing. The punch-drunk look of awe on his face drowns out all feelings of irritation at once. She smiles shyly, and watches his throat work against a dry swallow. It’s like an amalgamation of every soft look of wonder she’s ever caught him giving her over the last eight years. Every amused grin, every affectionate glance, every furtive look of longing, every heated, loving gaze, all wrapped into this breathtaking expression she’s just never seen before. It’s hard to find one word dignified enough to encompass the sheer magnitude of the emotions on his face; all she knows for certain is that this moment wipes Teddy and every other bad thing that has happened today completely off the board.

“ _Amy_ ,” he breathes - he  _chokes_ \- eyes glassy, face pale. If she didn’t know any better she’d say he’s falling in love with her all over again; if she didn’t know any better, she’d say she’s falling in love with him, too.

And she is. Every single day, she is.

It’s suddenly very difficult to meet his gaze, so she drops her head a little, staring down at their feet - at the stark contrast between his shiny black dress shoes and the clean-pressed white tulle of her gown. It’s always a yin and yang with them; a perfect balance, a perfect match. “The dress was supposed to be a surprise,” she says softly, chancing a glance up at him through her perfectly mascara’d lashes. “This was the only thing left that hadn’t gone wrong yet -”

“Babe,” he stops her gently, curling his index finger to hook beneath her chin and lift her head up slightly. “This is - you - you are  _so_ beautiful.”

Slowly, slowly, a smile begins to form along the corners of her mouth.

“Everything else about today has been shitty, you’re right. I can’t deny that anymore. And that sucks, because you deserve the most perfect wedding in history and I feel like I’ve failed you -”

“No,” she interrupts earnestly, pulling her hands from his grasp to touch his face. “None of this your fault, Jake, you haven’t failed me at all. In fact, you’ve been working so hard to fix everything you can and - and to make me feel better about the stuff that just can’t be fixed -” she swipes her thumbs over his cheeks, desperately searching for the right words, willing him to understand. “You’re the one who’s kept all of this together for as long as it’s been together. And if you work on our marriage even  _half_ as hard as you’ve worked on this wedding…I feel like the luckiest woman on the planet.”

It’s his turn to drop his gaze down to their feet, but she doesn’t give him long before she’s pulling him down to her level and kissing him soundly, pouring every modicum of love and adoration into the slow, languid movements of her lips against his.

He stays close after their lips part, his forehead warm and steady where it presses against hers; she winds her arms around his neck and smiles when she feels his hands along her lower back, pulling her in as close as he can without trodding on her feet. And he begins to sway to a beat only he can hear.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and his eyes flutter open to give way to a look of confusion. “I feel like…I don’t know. I’m bringing a lot more drama to this marriage than you are -”

“Please,” he interrupts with a dismissive roll of his eyes. “I can deal with a few exes. Besides…I can’t really blame them.”

She tilts her head slightly, knowing he can read her questioning look.

“I’m just saying if, y’know, god forbid,  _I_  ever ended up one of your exes…I know I’d never be able to get over you, either. As dumb as this sounds, I’m really glad I’m the one whose wedding with you is getting ruined instead of being the one who’s doing the ruining.”

There truly isn’t another word besides touched to express the way she’s feeling; as her vision goes blurry from unshed tears, she cranes her head up and kisses him again, a little harder than before. His hands slide flat and broad and warm up her back and he makes her feel cherished, like a priceless gem, like most important thing in the world.

“You’re never gonna have to worry about that,” she murmurs hoarsely when they break apart a moment later. “But for the record, I’d never be able to get over you, either.”

“You really are so beautiful,” he murmurs. Her eyes flutter open and he’s right there, smiling down at her, eyes roving unabashedly over her face. “I never thought in a million years I’d ever end up with anyone even half as incredible as you are. I overheard everything you said to Teddy, and - and I just really, really,  _really_ love you. Like, with everything I’ve got. You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me. You know that, right?”

Heart lurching, emotions knotting in her chest and throat, all she can really do is touch his face again. It’s not so much that she agrees with him, it’s just that despite being privy to a far more emotional side of Jake than the vast majority of the general population, he still catches her off-guard sometimes with these bald-faced declarations. It’s the way they’re phrased like irrefutable facts, like if she tried to argue he’d be able to produce all manner of statistics and charts proving exactly how right he is.

She never imagined that she would be the subject of a love so thrilling, so fierce.

Another resounding crash from the room adjacent to the ceremony space breaks their little bubble of solitude and Amy groans, not yet ready to deal with the reality of what their wedding day has become. Though her eyes are closed again she can perfectly picture the rueful smile on Jake’s face when she hears his exasperated chuckle; briefly, his lips press against her hairline, and she thinks to herself that she’d be rather content staying like this for the rest of her life.

“Remember a few months ago when you said you’d marry me in a dumpster?” Amy asks as Jake leads the way into the other room. She’s got her skirt gathered up in one hand and a grip around Jake’s hand with the other; she laces their fingers together as they hurry along.

“Yeah,” he says over his shoulder, “why?”

“I’m starting to think the dumpster is gonna be the better option.”

He laughs at that, fingers squeezing tighter around her hand, and even though the tides of chaos and anxiety are lapping at her consciousness, she feels herself clinging ever tighter to her unwavering pillar of calm. “C’mon,” Jake says warmly, “we’ve got a wedding to salvage.”

(The wedding is unsalvageable. Luckily, the marriage is the exact opposite.)


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the good place frozen yogurt flavor: grandma's kisses

Jake Peralta is dying.

At least, according to  _him_ , he’s dying.

In reality it’s nothing more than a particularly nasty strain of the flu throwing his immune system for a loop, but you wouldn’t guess it from the rattling cough or the (honestly slightly concerning) paleness to his face or the hoarse, bone-chilling moans that seem to be coming with the frequency of each exhale. He’s sick as a dog and miserable to boot, that much is certain - and he’s made it a point to ensure that Amy has not or will not forget it.

“Ames?”

His voice comes coarse and raw from somewhere down near her hip and Amy winces in spite of herself. It’s painful just listening to him - she’d never feed into his melodrama, but she can’t imagine how painful it must actually feel. “Hm?” she hums, keeping her eyes fixated on the page of her book despite the fact that the words are little more than a blur in her vision.

“What’re you doing?”

“Reading,” she says patiently. “What are  _you_ doing?”

“Tryin’ to figure out what you’re doing.”

“You’re  _supposed_ to be sleeping.” she says, allowing an ounce of sternness to color her tone. “Are you warm enough?”

“No.”

“You want me to go get more blankets from the living room?”

“No.”

His hands - clammy, but somehow still warm - slide across her stomach and lower back, and then he’s pulling her in closer, his face buried in the narrow space between the mattress and the left side of her lower back. His grip is stronger than she expected - though significantly weaker than usual - but when she laughs and rests her hand against his arm, she can feel the muscles straining with effort.

“Stay,” he says, pitiful despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that it’s muffled, and Amy gently caresses his arm in response.

“I’m just gonna grab more blankets, I’ll only be gone a minute -”

“No, no blankets, only you.”

“ _Jake_.”

“ _Fine_ ,” his arms loosen and the one across her hips falls away, allowing her room to roll to the side and escape to the living room. “You’re not as warm as Nana was, anyways.”

She scoffs and rolls her eyes as she carefully marks her place in her book. “Did Nana let you use her like a personal space heater when you were a kid?”

“Only  _always_ ,” he sniffs, and if he wasn’t so sick she’d say he would be attempting to sound put-out. “And she played with my hair and let me watch the - the turtles.”

His eyes are closed beneath his brow furrowed in displeasure and for a moment - a brief moment - she’s knocked breathless by how cute he is. In her mind’s eye she can perfectly imagine a smaller, baby-fat-lined eight-year-old version of him sprawled out across his grandmother’s bed, just as sick and miserable as he is now, asleep and oblivious to the television flickering with the colorful images of his favorite show. It’s overwhelming enough to make her consider up and hauling the television in their living room in here so he can watch one of the several TMNT DVD’s he brought with him upon moving in all those months ago.

Amy, now on her feet beside the bed, crouches down so that they’re at eye-level. “How ‘bout this,” she murmurs, and his eyelids flutter open again. “How about I go get your blankets and I tuck you in, and then I get back in the bed with you and play with your hair ‘til you fall asleep again?”

His eyes are openly roving, darting over her face and down her neck and back again several times over. “Is this ‘cause I said Nana played with my hair?”

She smiles. “Yep.”

“What about the turtles?”

“I can’t bring the TV in here, Jake.”

He pouts for only a moment before a new, sly expression morphs the features of his face. “Nana also used to kiss me when I was sick.” he says with what she guesses is supposed to be a suggestive wink.

She makes a show of gagging. “ _What_? You used to do  _what_ with your grandmother?”

It takes him a minute to follow where she’s leading, but understanding washes over him completely once it does. “Not - I just meant - my  _forehead_! She would, would kiss -  _shut up_ , I’m  _dying_!”

“Oh, poor Pineapples,” she croons, her laughter barely restrained, and she didn’t think it was possible but he looks even more miserable now than he did before.

“Get out, you jerk,” he croaks.

Still laughing, she straightens up and rounds the end of the bed to kneel beside him. He quietly grunts when she touches the side of his face but doesn’t try to twist away, so carefully - still smiling - she leans forward and presses a lingering kiss to his forehead, taking care to stroke his cheek with the pad of her thumb as she does.

“There,” she murmurs when she leans away.

He never verbalizes a response, due in large part to the fact that he’s already asleep.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the good place frozen yogurt flavor: unmitigated joy

Her very first cry is piercing and loud and in a split-second, the very foundation of his universe shifts. He can only see parts of her around the doctors and nurses moving swiftly and efficiently, but he can hear her - tiny, tiny, but wailing loud enough to fill every empty space in this room. And he’s destroyed, cracked open and stitched up and cracked open again, every single modicum of his entire existence suddenly hinging on this tiny human being who hasn’t been in this world longer than a minute yet. She’s been real to him in a removed, distant kind of way for the last nine months but she’s here now,  _right_ now, real and alive and screaming to prove it, and he doesn’t think there’s a word for the way his whole awareness is expanding and his heart is exploding and a supernova has suddenly burst to life inside his chest.

It’s overwhelming and impossible, so he does what he always does - he looks to Amy.

She’s still on the bed beside him, still clutching his hand for support, but while her sweaty face was twisted in unimaginable pain just a few short minutes ago, her expression perfectly mirrors the sheer intensity of what he’s feeling. Her eyes, so big and dark and swimming, seem almost frantic as she struggles to crane around to catch a even a glimpse, but they flick up to his face after just a moment; he thinks there might be tears in her eyes but it’s hard to tell, considering his vision is blurry from his own tears.

And then the doctor’s turning back toward them and there’s this wriggling, shrieking bundle in his arms and Jake’s not sure if he’s about to blast off into space or crumble to dust right there on the spot.

He does neither. He can’t, not with the doctor gently settling their newborn daughter in his arms.

He can’t remember how to move, how to speak, how to breathe, and his whole world has just narrowed down to that little face made pink from exertion and those little fists struggling to escape the soft cloth she’s swaddled in. And there’s a hand, bigger and adult-sized, clutching his bicep, pulling him down and in close to where Amy’s still straining, and it takes a painstaking moment of carefully, cautiously rearranging before he’s passed their daughter off to Amy.

To say her response is emotional would be a gross understatement; she’s practically sobbing, hands shaking as she carefully rearranges the folds of the cloth away from her little face. Jake’s well aware of the fact that he’s just as emotional as he hunches over to press his forehead to Amy’s temple, turned at an angle to continue memorizing his daughter’s face.

His daughter. Amy’s daughter.  _Their_ daughter, that they made  _together_.

Later, once the initial crying has stopped and the exhaustion of being alive has settled over little Rachel, the emotion is no less powerful. It’s restrained now, though - like a white-water rapid hidden beneath a thick sheet of ice - and it pulses through him as he tucks his head down beside Amy’s, peering over her shoulder at the newborn sleeping in the bassinet mere inches away.

And it’s been so hard to articulate what he’s been feeling - it’s always been hard, really, but especially today - and though he’s had the chance to talk to family and friends all day long, he hasn’t quite had a moment with just Amy since the night before when her contractions first started. So he smiles and pulls her in a little closer so that his lips can curl against her shoulder. He feels her hand close over his wrist, thumb stroking slowly and absently over the curve of his thumb, and his eyes flutter closed.

“I love you,” he whispers into her skin.

She hums - apparently too close to the edge of sleep to verbalize a response - and the joy pulsing strong and steady inside his chest seems to glow.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the good place frozen yogurt flavor: inside jokes

There is, Rosa  supposes, a certain portion of her anger for which she herself is responsible. A tiny, minuscule fraction of ownership in the haze of irritation clouding her mind that might possibly foster something like guilt later; something like a conscious, if she actually had one of those.

But she’s not going to spare that any serious thought right now. Not when she’s got Peralta in a half-nelson, his face pressed hard against the loose papers strewn around his desk.

He’s struggling to get loose, arms flailing backwards in a half-hearted attempt at batting her away, and the general cacophony of activity around the precinct is still carrying on as normal. It’s not the first time she’s had him pinned like this, she notes with a sense of satisfaction, so she supposes on some level that even this could be considered part of that precinct norm. An outside, unbiased source might even think Peralta  _deserves_ it.

Charles, however, does  _not_.

“Let him go, Rosa!” Boyle cries, sounding far too close and far too loud to still be sitting in his desk. “If you hurt his beautiful face, I swear I’ll -”

“You’ll  _what_?” Rosa barks over her shoulder, and Charles balks at once, shrinking back toward Terry’s desk. Once she’s certain he won’t do something stupid like try to ambush her from behind, she returns her attention to the part of Jake’s face still visible from this angle. “Are you gonna stop now?”

“This is assault,” he manages to gasp. “I’m gonna call the cops.”

“I outrank you, try again.”

“You don’t outrank me -”

“Seniority.”

He growls, loud and frustrated, and makes another valiant - but pointless - attempt at hitting her. “You’re not the boss of me!”

“I have no problem hanging you over the edge of the balcony -”

“Okay, okay, please! Mercy!”

“Say it.”

“Rosa Diaz is the best -”

“Say you’re gonna stop.”

“Fine! I’ll stop, I’ll stop, please let me go!”

She holds him there a moment longer before releasing him, backing away swiftly as he quickly rights himself and spins on his heel to face her. The side of his face she had pressed against the desk is red, the imprint of the spiral from his notebook lining his cheek, and as he rubs at it dejectedly he shoots her something between a pout and a disgruntled scowl. “I warned you.” she says with a shrug.

“I missed you the  _least_ while I was gone.”

She rolls her eyes and retreats to her desk, and after a moment of quiet, concerned (on Boyle’s end) conversation, Jake and Charles follow suit. The bullpen settles again, and after a few minutes, Rosa’s almost completely forgotten about it.

That is, until Amy’s voice suddenly echoes up the stairs. It’s clear from the serious, conversational pitch to her tone that she’s in conversation with someone on the staircase, likely stopped on her way up here, because apparently a full week of non-stop honeymooning wasn’t enough time for her (or for Jake). From her peripheral Rosa sees Jake perk up, whipped around in his chair toward the staircase, a grin already blossoming across his face.

Before Rosa can so much as growl his name, he’s already on his feet. “Look, everyone!” he shouts. “Here comes my  _wife_!”

Rosa grits her teeth and glares as fiercely as she can, even as she sees Amy bounding up the steps from her peripheral. “I had no idea my  _husband_ was up here!” Amy’s laughing as she says it - though no one else aside from Charles is - and Rosa supposes she needs to work on sharpening her already deadly glare, since Jake has yet to drop dead and she’s been boring holes through the side of his head for a good fifteen seconds now. “D’you still have your pineapple ring?”

His already obnoxiously bright grin nearly doubles as he shows off the ring on his left hand, almost proud, as if wearing a piece of jewelry is a major accomplishment for him. “Good thing dolphins don’t like pineapples,” he says as Amy finally draws near enough to take his hands.

“Oh, my god,” Gina groans, voice muffled, face-down on her desk. “We get it. Jake almost lost his ring in the ocean. His nickname is Pineapples. Pineapple rings. I’m gonna report you guys for harassment if you don’t  _shut up_  already.”

“I’m gonna throw you over the balcony if you don’t shut up already.” Rosa snaps as Amy opens her mouth to retort.

This seems to quell them both to some degree - the happiness on both of their faces dwindles, though it doesn’t fully disappear. “Rosa kind of made me her bitch a minute ago,” Jake whispers.

Amy glances up at him, brow furrowed. “But you’re  _my_ bitch.”

“I  _know_ that, that’s what the tattoo on my back says. ‘Amy Santiago’s bitch.’”

“I told you we should have given them their souvenirs first thing,” Amy hisses.

Gina lifts her head for the first time since arriving that morning.

“Yeah, well, if we’d done  _that_ we wouldn’t have anything to  _barter_ with,” Jake hisses back.

The souvenirs are pretty crappy - obviously Jake’s handiwork. Even though under normal circumstances, the gift of an extra-large t-shirt whose sole design is that of a cartoonish, buff, shirtless man’s torso drawn to look like it belongs to the person wearing it would be enough to make her want to beat someone’s face in, she just can’t bring herself to do it. Not when he hands it to her with such a bright, proud grin on his face.

“Picked it out special for your date with Alicia tomorrow night,” he says quietly with a wink and a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows.

“Sit down before I strangle you with this.” Rosa says calmly.

She doesn’t wear it on her date - but she  _does_ find Alicia wearing it in her kitchen the next morning.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve already packed my promises, they’re waiting by the door”

He’s not sure how to label this last box.

The rest of his life is packed away in neatly organized and thoroughly labeled moving boxes, currently packed in the back of the moving van idling by the curb downstairs. His apartment is totally empty for the first time since Gina moved in nearly ten years earlier, and as he stands surveying the place from his cramped kitchenette, he feels a sense of melancholy like a whisper in his chest.

Well, the apartment is  _nearly_ totally empty. There are a few nails protruding from the walls here and there, and that odd succulent-looking growth in the left corner of the window beside the space his bed used to occupy, and this last unlabeled box on the kitchen counter.

He supposes Amy might write something sensible like  _Odds and Ends_ , considering none of the items currently packed within really have anything in common. A few spare pens, pictures and magnets from his fridge, some of the trinkets from his desk that haven’t yet made their way back to the precinct, a tape dispenser and a half-used roll of tape, and a worn, folded bookmark. It’s a small box in comparison to some of the others, small and conceivably inconsequential, but as he stands in his kitchenette and taps the end of Amy’s permanent marker against his lips, he finds himself casting aimlessly for some word to encompass the contents of this box.

“Hey,” Amy’s voice is louder than usual without the furniture to absorb some of the sound, but when he turns toward her, he’s smiling. It’s been hard to  _not_ smile around her today (or any day, really, but  _especially_ today). She meanders inside slowly, a smile of her own gracing her face, gaze wandering over the bare walls and the imprints of the furniture still present in the carpet. She stops a few paces in, hands tucked into her back pockets. “Wow,” she says softly.

The melancholy surges stronger in the space around his heart.

“Kinda weird seeing it this empty,” Jake says, almost gruffly.

Though his gaze remains fixated on the box on the counter, he can see Amy turn her head toward him from the corner of his eye. “It’s okay to feel sad about leaving,” she murmurs.

He smiles, closes his eyes, and nods. “You know I’m excited,” he says, eyes fluttering open again.

“I do.”

“But…” he chances a glance up at her. “I’m also sad.”

She smiles, a small, knowing quirk of her lips. “I know.”

He nods. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” She approaches him slowly, and he holds very still, save for bowing his head just slightly to meet the soft press of her lips against his. “D’you want me to wait downstairs?” she asks when they break apart a moment later.

“No, no, I’m…I just need to label this and I’ll be ready.”

He nudges the box closer to her by half an inch, and her gaze becomes inquisitive as she peers over the flap closest to her. “Oh, wow. How about  _Junk Drawer_?”

“It’s not  _junk_ ,” he says indignantly. “There are pictures of  _you_ in here.” 

“Well, yeah, but there’s also a weird plastic thimble thing - is that the lid of a tube of toothpaste? And this weird old bookmark.” She pulls the box a little closer, reaching in to gently rearrange the contents. “Jake,” she says slowly, “what is all this stuff?”

He feels his cheeks burning, but he forces himself to keep his chin held high. “It’s all a bunch of random stuff that you either gave me, or that I…stole from you.”

She pulls one of the pens from the bottom of the box, staring at it incredulously. “I thought a witness stole this from me,” she says, looking a bit dumbfounded. “You said it was that old woman from the B-and-E back in twenty- _twelve_ -”

“I lied,” he says, only half-apologetically.

She stares, open mouthed, pen still held aloft between them, before her arm suddenly swings down to her side lifelessly. “I don’t know what to say.”

He shrugs, choosing to closely study the frayed corner of the box closest to him. “I liked pulling your pigtails,” he mumbles.

She huffs out a breath that might have been a laugh had he been looking, and then she drops the pen back into the box. It lands with a loud, hollow thump. “You won it fair and square,” she says when he shoots her a questioning look.

They grin at each other for a moment, before a new wave of determination washes over him. “I need to label this,” he says, “and we need to get going. We’re behind schedule.”

“So label it and let’s go, Peralta.”

“But what do I label it?”

“I dunno?  _Amy’s Stuff_?”

“Yeah, fat chance, fart monster. It’s like you said, I won it all fair and square. How about…”

He leans in close, blocking the box from her view, and scribbles the word currently simmering in his very veins across the side of the box. He recaps the pen and passes it backwards, and then folds the flaps down and secures them, all while still standing between her and the box. “Okay, I’m ready.”

He lifts the box and spins around, holding it in such a way that the label is presented to her. Her dark eyes flick across his writing in a split-second before they suddenly become misty; she’s shaking her head in what he hopes is something like awe and adoration when she meets his gaze again. “I love you so much,” she murmurs.

“I love you so much, too.”

He has to crane his neck a little to kiss her across the box he’s holding; he leaves his key on the counter, and walks along side her downstairs, intent on carrying the box labeled  _Promises_ all the way home.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “That drink you spilt all over me, lovers spit left on repeat, my mom and dad let me stay home, it feels so scary getting old”

From her perch on the roof, Amy can see every single person from her prom group strewn about the lake house grounds.

She’s right at the apex of the roof’s two slopes, knees drawn in toward her chest, feet planted flat against the shingles. Her arms are wrapped tight around her knees, fingers clinging to her forearms so tightly they’re practically numb; whether that numbness is from the lack of circulation or the chill in the air, she’s not entirely sure. There’s a sound of whooping and hollering from out in the water, laughter bubbling up over water splashing. It’s dark, but she can see Gina and Milton alternating between splashing each other and splashing Charles and Genevieve by the bright glow of the lights emanating from the back porch. Terry and Sharon are by the slowly-dying fire, seemingly too wrapped up in each other to remember their chaperoning duties, which is a good thing for Rosa and Alicia - they’re darting back and forth between the cooler hidden around the side of the house and the trees some fifty yards off, smuggling luke-warm bottles of beer into the foliage under their shirts. Amy chuckles, tucking her head down against her arm, when Alicia drops a bottle that somehow does not shatter.

There’s something sharp about the laughter, something painful in her chest, and she’s not sure if it’s the serrated edge of betrayal or the bigger, more ragged thing that has been looming like a shadow in the back of her mind for months now.

She can see everyone, except her date - he’s inside, in the bedroom they were meant to share, snuggled up close with Jake’s date.

Coincidentally, she hasn’t seen Jake in a while, either.

As if on cue, the worn wooden ladder she’d used to get up here, leaned up against the side of the house, begins squeaking and groaning in protest beneath someone’s weight. She peeks over her shoulder and spots his curls standing stark against the dark, star-speckled backdrop above their heads; he’s quiet, almost contemplative, as he scales up the slope and settles down beside her.

Not quite touching, but close enough that she can feel the heat of him through her sweatpants.

Silence - while rare - has always been a comfortable phenomenon to share with Jake. He is inherently loud and boisterous and present, most certainly, but the quiet seems almost as natural to him as the disruptiveness.

She’d never tell him to his face, but she rather likes the quieter version of him.

(She likes all of him, all the time, okay, it’s something she’s come to terms with even though she’ll most definitely take that particular secret to her grave, but there’s just something about a quiet and intently focused Jake that haunts her daydreams.)

“So,” he says after a moment, and the coarseness to his voice almost startles her. “Prom was…fun?”

She can sense his smile without having to look. “Who would have guessed that they would recycle the same decorations for a  _fifth_ year in a row?”

He barks out a laugh, and she’s caught unaware by a sudden, strong tide of anger and frustration originating from somewhere between his ribs. “That blew,” he sighs, and from the corner of her eye, she sees him scrub the heal of his hand over one of his eyes.

“At least we’re in pajamas now,” Amy offers, almost hesitantly.

He pats his palms over his thighs - over his threadbare Power Rangers flannel pajama bottoms. “We should’a just worn this to the actual dance, for all the good dressing up did for us.”

She shakes her head as she chuckles. “But then Stevie would have spilled punch on my pajamas instead of my dress, which would have been an  _actual_ problem.”

“ _God_ , he spilled that stuff  _all over_  you.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s in the bathtub in my - in the bedroom.”

She feels her face heating up - suddenly the space between them is a bottomless chasm, and impossible distance. Thick tension has her shoulders drawn in tight, practically to her ears.

Jake remains quiet. Slowly, uncertainly, Amy turns her head; he’s staring straight ahead, out into the water, but by the unfocused look in his eyes she’d be willing to bet he’s not actually comprehending anything he’s seeing. “I already know,” he finally says, gaze never wavering.

She chews the inside of her cheek, waiting.

“They’re in bed together.”

Slowly, she nods, returning her gaze to face forward as well. “Yeah,” she breathes.

The silence lasts another beat. “Are you okay?”

She furrows her brow. “I don’t know. I think I’m supposed to not be, but…okay, honestly, when I walked in on them, I…I didn’t actually feel…much of anything? Is that weird?”

He’s already looking at her when she turns toward him, a concerned, inquisitive look on his face. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I mean…yes? Maybe? But…I kind of felt the same way when  _I_  walked in on them. Well, that’s not…that’s not entirely true, actually. I was really mad, but…” he reaches to rub the back of his neck, and in the moonlight, Amy can see his cheeks reddening. “I was…actually more pissed at your date than at mine. I just - I know you really like him, and that you were really excited when he asked you to prom and everything, and…I dunno, I was pissed on your behalf, I guess.”

A laugh escapes her chest before she can stop it. “This is gonna sound really weird, but I felt the same way about you!”

“Really?”

“Yeah! You’ve been talking about asking that girl out for  _weeks_ , and then she goes and pulls a stunt like that - not cool.”

He snorts with laughter and she follows suit, and after a moment, all the hurt and betrayal fades away. It’s quiet - comfortable - and as she hiccups back to seriousness, she tilts her head down to rest against Jake’s shoulder.

He inches a little closer, until their thighs are flush together.

“You don’t have to worry about my date,” he says eventually. “Honestly, she was kind of my second choice anyways, so it’s not a major loss.”

“I thought Jake Peralta doesn’t settle for second-best?” she chides, poking him lightly in the side.

“Well, he does when the best of the best has already been taken.”

Amy springs up from his shoulder, adrenaline rushing through her veins at the knowledge that Jake has a secret. “You were gonna ask someone else?” she clarifies, and he grimaces as he nods. “You never told us that! Who was it?”

“Does it really matter?” he mumbles, and now his entire face is going red.

“Uh,  _duh_! Was it Jenny?”

“No.”

"Bernadette?”

“God, no.”

“Sophia?”

“No.”

“Ashley?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, those are literally all the girls you’ve liked in the last  _ten years_ , Jake.”

“All the ones you guys know about.”

“I call bull, you never keep secrets from any of us, especially Charles. If there was another girl, we would have heard about it.” He’s got a brow arched, a smug grin on his face, when a new thought occurs to Amy. “Unless…unless it  _is_ one of us.”

His smugness is immediately replaced with mild panic.

“Oh my god, is it Gina?”

“Ew!”

“Rosa?”

“Amy, you  _know_ she scares me.”

“Genevieve?”

“I would  _never_  do that to Charles!”

“It can’t be Alicia…there’s no one else, what kind of BS hint  _was_ that -”

“You forgot one,” he interrupts.

The tension is back, morphing into something unfamiliar and scary, and Amy stares hard at his face as she tries to comprehend what he’s trying to tell her. “Sharon?”

“Amy.”

He says it pointedly, head bowed toward her just slightly - and all at once, her world seems to implode. She feels herself shaking her head, blinking rapidly, and he watches patiently. “But,” she finally manages to gasp, “but you said - you said -”

“I lied.”

Her heart is thundering. “But why?” she manages to whisper. His brows furrow. “Why me?”

He looks even more confused than before. “What d’you mean, why you? Why  _not_ you? You’re beautiful, you’re funny, you’re so freakin’ smart, you’re my  _best friend_  -”

“You have, like, nine best friends,” she interrupts before she can stop herself.

“Alright, fine, but you’re the only friend I  _need._  Look, Ames,” he angles toward her slightly, shifting his hips to better meet her gaze, and the loss of his body heat against her side is even more jarring than his impromptu confession. “You’re way out of my league. Like, so far out of my league it’s hardly even the same sport, y’know what I mean?” She nods, too dumbfounded to even argue, and his answering smirk is wry. “I’m not asking you to do anything about this, okay? I wasn’t planning on telling you about this. Like, ever. Like, I was gonna take it to my grave, okay? But, y’know, it’s…it’s prom night. It’s kinda romantic.” He gestures lamely all around them, and Amy’s glance catches on the moonlight reflecting on the water off to her right. “I don’t want this to effect our friendship, that’s the most important thing to me, ‘cause we’re going to the same college in a few months and you’re gonna be my only friend there and I just - I really don’t want to lose you -”

“Jake,” she interrupts, and he falls silent, eyes practically bulging out of his head. “You’re not - you’re not gonna lose me, okay? I wouldn’t - just, no. That’s not gonna happen.”

She sees him swallow thickly as he nods.

“Just so that I’m clear, you…you…like me? Like…romantically?”

He snorts, and then immediately covers his mouth with his hand. “Yeah,” he says through his fingers.

“And you were never gonna tell me?”

Still covering his mouth, he shakes his head.

She can’t fight it any longer; a smile morphs across her face, and she can see something like hope ignite in Jake’s expression immediately. “Well that would have been really stupid,” she says as he slowly lowers his hand, “considering I…kind of…like you, too. Like, romantically.”

Despite his broad grin, she can clearly detect his awe. “Are you serious?”

“I was never gonna tell you, either,” she laughs, nodding. “Mostly because I didn’t wanna stroke your ego -”

“You wanna stroke my  _what_?”

“Shut  _up_ -”

They dissolve into laughter, and then he’s up against her side again. “I know things are kind of…up in the air right now,” he says. “I don’t expect you to, like, immediately jump into a relationship with college coming up and everything, but -”

“You talk too much,” she murmurs, fingers already tunneling through the soft curls at the base of his skull. He moves toward her willingly and all at once Amy Santiago is kissing Jake Peralta and it’s magic, it’s warmth, it’s electric and hypnotic and fantastic -

A quiet explosion of sound from down on the ground has the wrenching apart just a few seconds later - and suddenly, she’s aware of the fact that she was just kissing Jake Peralta on the roof of a lake house, in perfect view of the rest of their prom group. “That’s embarrassing,” Jake mutters as she groans and buries her face in his shoulder.

“Is someone crying?”

“Charles, probably. He’s known since October.”

“Peralta?”

“Hm?”

“Get me off this roof, now.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “sometimes in the dead of night when you think you can’t make it, you might find i left a light beside the bed for you, ‘cause i’ve been there, too”

It’s the loneliness, he thinks, that is the most profound.

That emptiness in his chest, somehow all-encompassing and minuscule at the same time. All-encompassing in the way it seems to surge through his very bones, to pull at the tired bags beneath his dry eyes and the perpetually-tugged-down corners of his mouth; minuscule in its insignificance when considering the grand scheme of the universe as a whole.

It’s exhausting, frankly.

And yet, it persists.

For a long, long time, it festers in isolation. He drags himself to his daily obligations and drags himself back home again, and the world in general should count itself lucky that he somehow manages to produce the effort it takes to make himself decent every day. Because if he had it his way - or, more accurately, if  _it_ had it  _its_ way - he’d never don anything aside from a pair of boxers and a hole-riddled undershirt from the bottom of his drawer.

(Laundry’s already a challenge on a good day.)

But then she comes around, and she has this way about her. This starshine - this  _light_ \- that ignites the deepest shadows. The darkness fights against her but it’s undeniable - its grip around him has loosened, and each day, he gets closer and closer to breaking its grip around him for good. Because of  _her_.

He’s not quite there yet. But that’s okay - that’s what she tells him. It’s okay, as long as he remembers that no matter what, she’s here. She’s here, and she’s not going anywhere.

The darkness is cyclical, thankfully (and unfortunately). It comes in waves. Some waves are bigger than others - some are outright tsunamis - but they always, eventually ebb.

Perhaps the knowledge that it’s only a matter of when is what abets the movement of said ebb; either way, it never fails, so his concern for his own well-being never flairs much further than a passing thought.

The same cannot be said of his concern for  _her_ well-being.

Her darkness, while similar to his in so many ways (and it’s just like the two of them to be similar in this respect in addition to the laundry list of similarities unfurling further and further every day), is different in its approach. It’s sneakier - it’s meaner - it’s more unpredictable. While his sets on like a hazy summer afternoon, hers is sharp and unforgiving in its accuracy. His is triggered by the most innocuous things; hers explodes spectacularly, usually on the heels of an epic failure - or, at least, on what she deems to be an epic failure.

Because god knows that for all of their similarities, her measurement of her own failure is so much more harsh than his.

She’d probably string him up by his toes if she knew just how downright panicky he’s feeling about the whole thing. She’d admonish him verbally - maybe accentuate it with a gentle-but-firm smack to his upper arm - and then she’d retreat even further into herself, drawing ever farther away from him. Which would only serve to exacerbate his concern - and so on and so forth.

It’s a vicious cycle, and he’s helpless to it, left floundering on the shore to watch her struggle against the riptide.

He does what he can. Jokes like he doesn’t notice her hands shaking from sleeplessness and lost appetite, smiles like he can’t tell the answering quirk of her lips is twitchy and hardly even enough to be considered a grimace. He makes her favorite meals from childhood and orders her favorite takeout and sits beside her on the couch to gladly,  _excitedly_ watch the backlog of documentaries eating a hole through their DVR from the last month. Sometimes she holds his hand. Sometimes she tucks her blanket around her legs and crosses her arms over her stomach, ensuring no inch of her is in direct contact with him.

Sometimes she forgoes the couch completely to lay in their bed, her back to the bedroom door, staring out the window.

He pretends like he doesn’t notice the tear stains on her pillow case the next morning.

He’s trying.

And yet, it persists.

It leaves him listless most nights, scrolling through article after article on his phone, searching for the right answer. Because there  _is_ a right answer, here, he can feel it in his bones - there’s a way to strike that delicate balance between loving concern and being outright overbearing. There’s a way to coax her back without invalidating what she’s feeling, what she’s drowning in.

There’s an answer - he just hasn’t found it yet.

They’re due back at the precinct tomorrow morning - Captain Holt only gave them a week, and really, seven days just isn’t enough time to fully come to terms with how spectacularly her last case fell apart. He’s toggling back and forth between the fifteenth article of the night and the half-drafted, poorly-worded email to Holt asking for a few more days - when he hears her footsteps creaking down the hall.

He locks the screen and tucks his phone beneath his thigh.

“Hey,” her voice is hoarse, scratchy. She’s still partially hidden around the doorway, but he can see her whole face, illuminated by the lamp still blazing on the side table to his left and the neon lights pouring through the windows from the street below. She looks tired - she looks like hell - she looks one breath away from slipping into the abyss.

(She always says he’s got an over-dramatic streak; he always says that he gets it from Gina.)

“Hi,” he says, doing his best to keep his tone neutral, because he knows exactly how grating it is to hear that nurse’s  _how are you feeling_  tone of voice, how infuriating it is to feel like someone is coddling you, babying you, belittling you.

The line of her mouth seems to flatten for a moment, but then she’s glancing down, examining a chip in the wooden doorframe below the heel of her hand. “You comin’ to bed soon?”

He nods.

She purses her lips, glances around the room, and then looks back at him. “Everything okay?”

He hesitates. It’s obvious to anyone with even the faintest grasp on the situation that everything is most certainly  _not_ okay, but he knows that she knows that. The space between them feels heavy; the space between them feels insurmountable and impossible.

There’s probably an article out there about it.

He hesitates, and then he smiles. “Yeah,” he nods, hands tucked beneath his thighs. “Just - thinking.”

He sees the muscles of her throat work as she swallows, her eyes moving as she studies his face, and then she’s nodding, too. “Me too.” she confesses, voice small.

His heart is broken into so many fragile little pieces. Broken for the case, for all five victims, for her.

She shifts on her feet, pulling away, stepping back a few inches further into the hall. “I left a light on for you, whenever you come back.”

He clenches his jaw, digs the pads of his fingers into his thighs, and nods. “Thanks, babe.” he says softly.

The softest, faintest smile twitches across her lips. “You’re welcome.”

She’s gearing up to move again, he’s only got a half-second before she’s gone, and he’s grasping at straws, at moonbeams, at the grains of dust swirling through the shafts of light behind him and between them and the bottomless cavern threatening to swallow her whole. “I - I left one on for you, too,” he says, voice taking on that funny choked filter that only emerges with his most raw emotions.

She pauses, hand still clutching the door frame, nail beds going white beneath the force of her suddenly-tightened grip.

“I know you don’t wanna talk about it,” he starts, schooling his voice, forcing himself to stay low and soothing. “I don’t wanna  _make_ you talk about it. Not ‘til you’re ready. Not ever, if you don’t wanna talk to me about it. But I just - god. I love you  _so much_ , Amy, and it’s - it’s  _killing_ me, watching this eat you alive. I’ve been researching the hell out of this, trying to figure out what I can do to make it better, but…I should know better than that. I should know better, because I’ve been there, too. I know - I know.” He can only see half of her face around the door frame, and the way the shadows fall across her features makes it difficult to accurately gauge her reaction, but he’s fairly confident that her lower lip is quivering. “I’m not trying to push you into doing anything that you’re not comfortable with. That’s the last thing I want. And I’ll never bring this up again if you don’t want me to. But Amy -  _Ames_ \- I love you so much.  _So_ much. And I need you to know that I’m always gonna keep a light on for you.  _Always_.”

The quiver is undeniable now - it and the tears brimming in her tired, blood-shot eyes - and the next thing he knows she’s burying herself in him, body tucked haphazardly against his side, face safely hidden in the juncture of his shoulder and neck. And she’s cracked open, and the darkness is a rushing whirlpool all around her, he can feel its slimy tendrils licking at her skin - but his grip around her is tight, firm, persistent. She’s cracked open and spilling everywhere and it’s taking everything in him to not release some kind of primal war cry in a neandertholic attempt at scaring her demons away. It’s taking everything in him to keep the whispered stream of soothing nonsense steady against her hairline, to keep the salty tears spilling from his own eyes from slipping between his lips and her temple.

She clings to him like he’s her lifeline; he clings to her because she’s his.

And later, when they’re in bed and her face is pleasantly expressionless against his chest, he strokes her hair with one hand and finishes the email to Holt with the other. Because she deserves a few days to recuperate from the hell the last few days have been; she deserves a few days to adjust to this newfound peace, to even out the ripples still disrupting her existence, to settle back into herself and to stretch out the joints that are creaking and the muscles that are burning.

There’s a very good chance, his darkness whispers, that this peace won’t last. That sooner or later his darkness will return, that hers won’t be long after, that the two of them will sink into their own separate purgatories, helpless to save each other. There’s a chance he’ll fail again, there’s a chance he’ll fail  _her_ , there’s a chance that he’ll lose everything good, that he’ll no longer be worthy of her or the peace she offers him.

But he pushes that whisper away with little more than a tired, half-conscious hum. Because they’re both wrapped up in peace and in each other. Because that’s enough for now.

And it persists.


End file.
